Thu, Jul 01, 2010
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an essayist, poet, philosopher, and anti-slavery activist. Among his other notable books are A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. He died of tuberculosis and he is buried in his family's plot near the graves of his friends Hawthorne, Alcott, Emerson, and Channing on Author's Ridge in Concord's Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
Thu, Jul 01, 2010
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. His three volumes of short fiction, The Happy Prince (1888), Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (1891) and A House of Pomegranates (1891), together with his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), gradually won him a reputation as a modern writer with an original talent, a reputation confirmed and enhanced by the phenomenal success of his plays. Success, however, was short-lived. In 1895, when his success as a dramatist was at its height, Wilde brought an unsuccessful libel action against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde lost the case and was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for acts of gross indecency. He was released from prison in 1897 and went into an immediate self-imposed exile on the Continent. He died in Paris in ignominy in 1900.
Thu, Jul 01, 2010
Walter Scott (1771-1832), considered the inventor and master of the historical novel, wrote The Heart of the Mid-Lothian, Rob Roy, Old Morality, and Waverley, as well as narrative poems, a nine-volume Life of Napoleon, and a history of Scotland.
Thu, Jul 01, 2010
FYODOR MIKHAILOVICH DOSTOEVSKY (1821–1881) was born in Moscow, the son of a surgeon. Leaving the study of engineering for literature, he published Poor Folk in 1846. As a member of revolutionary circles in St. Petersburg, he was condemned to death in 1849. A last-minute reprieve sent him to Siberia for hard labor. Returning to St. Petersburg in 1859, he worked as a journalist and completed his masterpiece, Crime and Punishment, as well as other works, including The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov.
Thu, Jul 01, 2010
MARK TWAIN (1835–1910), was born Samuel L. Clemens in the town of Florida, Missouri. His masterpieces, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), are not only classics of humorous writing but also a graphic picture of nineteenth-century America.
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